Hwang Seon-woo, the ‘signboard of Korean swimming’, advanced to the final in the men’s 200m freestyle at the 2022 Short Course World Swimming Championships with a chin-up.
Hwang Seon-woo, last year’s champion, recorded 1:42:44 in the men’s freestyle 200m preliminaries on the 6th day of the competition held at the 메이저사이트 Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Center on the 18th, placing 8th out of 47 participants in the event, and the finals given to the top 8 joined last.
Hwang Seon-woo’s record on this day is 1 second and 45 seconds behind the Asian record of 1:40:99, which he set two days ago on the 16th in the men’s 800m relay final as the Korean team’s No. 1 swimmer.
The men’s 200m freestyle final, in which Hwang Seon-woo will challenge for a second consecutive victory, will be held at 6:50 pm on the same day.
Hwang Seon-woo, who was assigned lane 4 of group 4 in the preliminaries, competed fiercely from the preliminaries as David Popovic (Romania), his rival and the strongest player in the long course, jumped into the current in lane 3.
In addition, three players competed for the lead, with Thomas Neil of Australia, the home team, also catching up in lane 6.
Hwang Seon-woo, who was struggling with Popovich and Neil, took 1:30:00 at the 175m mark at the final turn, beating Popovich by 0.09 seconds and running in second place, but fell behind in the final 25m spurt and eventually came in third.
Popovich took first place in Group 4 with a time of 1:42:31, and Neil took second place with a time of 1:42:38.
Hwang Seon-woo almost missed out on the ticket to the final given to the top 8 swimmers because swimmers 5 and 6 showed outstanding skills, but advanced to the final in 8th place, beating Kieran Smith (1:42:54) of the United States by 0.10 seconds.
The overall first place in this event went to London Olympics men’s 200m freestyle gold medalist Tom Dean (Great Britain) who recorded 1:40:98.
Japan’s Katsuhiro Matsumoto won the silver medal with a time of 1:41:29, and France’s Maxime Gruse took second and third place with a time of 1:41:79, respectively.
Hwang Seon-woo succeeded in passing the preliminaries, but the race for the second consecutive victory is not expected to be easy as he is assigned the 8th lane on the edge in the finals.